Tour favourite is honing his form for July, but would be happy to take his first Dauphiné win
Tour de France champion Alberto Contador (Astana) is the outstanding favourite for this year’s race and starts the Critérium du Dauphiné tomorrow as he gets ready for the race next month. He is at the race, not to win, but to hone his form for July, according to AFP.
"My main aim here is to put in some base miles in preparation for the Tour," said Contador in a pre-race press conference in Amphion les Bains; the Spaniard has not raced since the Liège-Bastogne-Liège, more than a month ago.
He has used the time to perform reconnaissance on the mountains of the Tour, which included an unexpected rendezvous with the Schleck brothers of Saxo Bank on the Col du Tourmalet last week. Andy, the younger of the brothers is expected to be his biggest rival at the Tour de France once more.
Despite checking out the mountains, Contador’s form is not yet anywhere near its peak, so he won’t be going all out for victory in this week’s race. "I'm getting better every day,” he said, “but I really don't have the form to contend overall victory here. That means I'll be more relaxed in the mountains than usual."
With a 52km individual time trial, longer than of late, coming on the penultimate day of the Tour, Contador is especially interested in the Dauphiné’s third stage, where riders will cover 49km against the clock. He has spent some time in the wind tunnel over the winter and is anxious to test his new position in the real world conditions of a race. "More than anything I want to see what I can do on the time trial bike,” he said, “because we haven't had a lot of time thus far to test it on the road,"
As the Dauphiné is one of the final opportunities to race before the Tour de France, a number of other teams are sending their overall contenders to the race. Andy Schleck and Lance Armstrong are missing but a number of other podium hopefuls will be there, meaning that Contador is not taking the race lightly.
"I haven't looked at the start list but I know that [Denis] Menchov and [Samuel] Sanchez will be in the fight for overall victory,” he said, “plus there's RadioShack, who have [Haimar] Zubeldia and [Chris] Horner, so it will be far from easy,"
Although he is starting the race with one eye on his condition for next month’s Tour de France, he would very much like to go better than his third place iast year’s edition. "I'd like to add the Dauphiné Libéré to my list of victories, but for me overall victory is not essential," he said. "If I'm racing and the opportunity presents itself then okay, I'm not going to pass it up. But my main objective is to train in race conditions."